Full moon on little Ifefe
Ifefe is a hill situated in the Matopos National Park. The Ndebele word refers to one of our most beautiful birds: the Lilac-breasted Roller or “blue jay.” According to Sir Robert Tredgold, the name is “probably a reference to the colouration of the hill.” The story goes that Mzilikazi, first king of the Amandebele, was the only one allowed to use the feathers of this bird for titivation; consequently it is also known as Mzilikazi’s Roller.
Not to Ifefe, but to a smaller eminence nearby, known as Ifefe Encinyane (Little “blue jay”) do we go to experience transcendence. We picnic in the late afternoon at a point with a 360 degree view of the horizon. The crystalline granite hill encrusted with yellow, orange and silver lichen, upon which we sit, is about two thousand million years old
We have the world to ourselves. We are waiting for the moment when the setting sun meets the rising moon: their size is equal, their radiance is equal. The light of consciousness merges with the light of instinct. We sip our wine on the threshold of time and eternity. We are neither male nor female; we are perfection. Like salt dolls walking into the ocean*, we lose ourselves together with the world. The experience is beyond meaning.
*This analogy is Ramakrishna’s